…Voudreau, a member of Transition Santa Cruz’s steering committee, said that drastic change is coming whether we want it or not, that there is no point in discussing whether or not we should be driving, and soon, in fact, the luxury to make such choices will not even exist.

“We’re here,” she said, “to talk about peak oil.”

But Transition Santa Cruz and its several hundred members firmly believe that, although dramatic change may be in the works, we can prepare for it if we reorganize the way we live. The organization was born last summer as just one localized faction of the worldwide Transition movement, which first began in 2007 in Totnes, England. It was there that one Rob Hopkins recognized that the modern world will not be able to continue on its current trajectory when fast, easy access to oil peaks and begins to dwindle—or when global warming and economic meltdown, the other two drivers of the Transition movement, become inescapable realities.

But in an ideal Transition town, society would be ready for such changes. With limited gas-powered transport or oil-based products, a Transition community’s people would live within cycling distance of one another in a township built upon complete self-sufficiency, with extremely localized infrastructure for agriculture, clothes making, metalworking and other basics of life that humanity largely abandoned to the factories in the late 1800s, when oil power turned life into a sort of leisurely vacation from reality…

A financial system based upon debt and an economy based upon a dwindling fuel source are fated to fail, Levy says—and possibly soon. He and the handful of others on Transition Santa Cruz’s steering committee would like to see Santa Cruzans pull together, relocalize production of food and goods, build resilience into the community and hit the ground running when the oil crash arrives.

“I want to plant the seeds for an alternative system of living, because the current system is in trouble,” Levy says. “We need to become more self-reliant and be able to handle big changes like peak oil and climate change.”

In a viable Transition Town, resourcefulness and thrift would prevail as citizens learned to produce their own goods, tools and other products that societies today often import from halfway around the globe. With machines and factories no longer readily available, almost all citizens would need to participate to some level in such production.

To address this, Transition founder Hopkins detailed a 12-part process in The Transition Handbook, which has sold more than 10,000 copies nationwide. In its pages he describes, among other essentials, “The Great Reskilling,” an effort in which communities must retrain men and women in such trades and crafts as saving seeds and growing foods, pickling vegetables, building simple structures, installing rain catchment systems, building composting toilets and many other fundamental life skills of which most dwellers in the modern era know nothing.

It wasn’t so long ago that this was just ordinary life. In the 1850s, societies functioned largely as local entities, without deep reliance on global economies. Many, if not most, Americans lived on or near farms. They knew how to work with their hands and feed themselves. This was true well into the 20th century—and our elders can remember that era. In fact, The Transition Handbook includes a chapter titled “Honoring the Elders,” in which Transitionists are advised to gather information and anecdotes from old-timers about life before everything was mechanized, prepackaged and seemingly effortless…

“If you are a typical American and have expectations of increasing income, cheap food, discretionary spending, leisure time and vacations in Hawaii, then the change we expect soon could be what you would consider ‘doom,’ because your life is going to fall apart.”

“There is nothing that can replace oil and allow us to maintain life at the pace we’ve been living,” he says. “Crude oil is hundreds of millions of years of stored sunlight, and we’re using it all up in a few generations. It’s like living off of a savings account, whereas solar energy is like working and living off your daily wages.”

The sheer cost-efficiency of oil eclipses all purported alternatives. Removed from the ground and burned, oil makes things move almost miraculously. A tank of gasoline in a sedan holds enough energy to equal approximately five years of one person’s rigorous manual labor—an almost mind-boggling analogy that illustrates the impossibility of replacing oil power with manual force. Historically, too, oil has been very easy to get since the world’s first well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859; for each barrel’s worth of energy invested in the process of accessing crude oil, 30 barrels are produced, says Fridley. By contrast, ethanol is a paltry substitute; each barrel’s worth of oil invested in ethanol production produces a mere 1.2 barrels of raw product. Other renewables offer similarly poor returns. “The thermodynamics just don’t add up,” Fridley says.

Put another way, societies of the pre-oil age worked their butts off. Roughly 90 percent of the population toiled in jobs that produced our energy, like coal, food and water, while just 10 percent of the populace reaped the rewards through jobs in politics, the arts, begging and prostitution, to name several fields. Today, by contrast, just 5 percent of Americans work jobs that relate to producing food and energy, while 95 percent reap the rewards, working at abstract tasks in offices. To be suddenly denied machine labor in a nation like ours—which has been built upon oil-age expectations—this top-heavy employment imbalance can only do one thing, peak oil folks say: capsize…

They Got Hope

“People who feel hopeless about this are doing so because they feel alone, due to the erosion of community in our society,” he says. “But the power of coming together and acting in solidarity is tremendous, and that’s what Transition is about. Anyone who says there is no hope is not being realistic. There is always hope.”

Transitionists are readying for the new era with open arms while struggling to convince others of the severity of the matter. In Santa Cruz, several city figures, including Councilman Don Lane and the city’s climate action coordinator, Ross Clark, have attended multiple meetings of Transition Santa Cruz. San Francisco, too, has acknowledged peak oil, and a city-appointed peak oil task force recently submitted to the supervisors a 120-page report detailing the city’s readiness for and vulnerabilities to peak oil.

Elsewhere, most politicians and leaders don’t take peak oil seriously, and full governmental support may never arrive; Levy believes that politicians locally and nationally will be even more reluctant to discuss peak oil than they’ve been to address climate change.

“Transition is probably going to grow from the ground up before the government comes onboard,” he predicts.

Fridley also believes assistance will not come from the world’s leaders. Transition can only be a grassroots revolution. He points out that Secretary of Energy Steven Chu was previously the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where Fridley has done much of his thinking about peak oil and Transition.

“[Chu] was my boss,” says Fridley. “He knows all about peak oil, but he can’t talk about it. If the government announced that peak oil was threatening our economy, Wall Street would crash. He just can’t say anything about it.”

Fridley says no one wants to face the fact that the oil-age feeding frenzy can’t continue forever. “Ask a scientist if something can grow forever exponentially, and they’ll say, ‘No.’ Then ask how our economy can keep on growing, and they’ll say, ‘Well, it has to.’

But it can’t, and the peak oil folks say something will have to give. The question is when—and will we be ready? The small gathering of 70 people who met at the Center Street police station in May believe, or at least hope, that we have time to prepare.

“I believe peak oil is going to have enormous consequences for the culture, civilization and the world,” said Chuck Atkinson, a retired UCSC professor of creative writing who attended the meeting last month. “There’s been very little government involvement so far, and I think this will start from the ground up.”

And it is. Transition movements are appearing worldwide—there are now roughly 150 localized efforts using the capital T… a small yet promising faction of the world clearly recognizes that, as the sun sets on the oil age, a revolution will occur, and we have two choices: React or prepare.

The agency's assessment of fracking fluid disclosure is part of its broader study on fracking and water—and spotlights the project's limitations.By Neela Banerjee Oil and gas companies refuse to disclose 10 percent of the hundreds of chemicals they use during hydraulic fracturing, according to a new analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency. […]

Two scientists from Columbia University launch a $40,000 pilot testing project in Pennsylvania they hope will lead to full-scale research.By David Hasemyer Frank Varano knows what's coming. His land near Williamsport, Pa., abuts property that has been leased for gas exploration––and he's certain it will be fracked. What is less certain is how that […]

If a new rule takes effect, about 95 percent of all pipelines would be subject to stricter safety testing because of their age, location and other factors.By Elizabeth Douglass It's been two years since a broken 1940s ExxonMobil pipeline flooded an Arkansas neighborhood with Canada's heaviest oil, and the ripple effects of the spill have made it to […]

(Reuters)The United States will submit plans for slowing global warming to the United Nations early this week but most governments will miss an informal March 31 deadline, complicating work on a global climate deal due in December. The U.S. submission, on Monday or Tuesday according to a White House official, adds to national strategies beyond 2020 already p […]

Gordon Klingenschmitt, the fundamentalist Christian and Colorado lawmaker, is finally getting a sort of punishment following his comments last week that the brutal attack of a pregnant woman occurred because we allow legal abortions in this country.He has now been pulled from one of the two committees on which he served:

How many religious references do we need to see from public school officials before we can all admit they've overstepped their bounds?Exhibit 1: Principal Albert Hardison's message on the website for Walnut Hill Elementary/Middle School in Louisiana, part of the Caddo Parish Public Schools:

In 1994, the Bronx Household of Faith (an urban church) filled out an application to rent out space at a New York City public school for its Sunday morning services. Their application was rejected because of something now known as "Standard Operating Procedure" (SOP) §5.11.No outside organization or group may be allowed to conduct religious service […]

Yesterday, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed SB 1318, a bill whose support is almost entirely partisan (yup, from the party that hates, hates, hates government regulation) and restricts abortion coverage in insurance plans.Oh, and it also includes an amendment to the state's informed consent laws to tell women about abortion reversals:The law requires […]

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon→

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume. ~Noam Chomsky

Transition Tools (Basic)

Stoics/Freethought

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman